


imagination out of focus

by colazitron



Series: 2019 December Holiday Fic Countdown [3]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, cis girl au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21663181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: Isabell can't stop thinking about the new girl. Too bad her life won't stop to let her catch up and figure out what to do.(Or: cis girl AU)
Relationships: Even Bech Næsheim/Isak Valtersen, Even Bech Næsheim/Sonja (SKAM)
Series: 2019 December Holiday Fic Countdown [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559638
Comments: 18
Kudos: 44





	imagination out of focus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Izzy_Murph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Murph/gifts).



> **A/N:** This is a part two, and it'll definitely make more sense if you've read part 1, but also if you just read this as a cis girl AU take on episode 2 of s3, you should be fine.
> 
> For laughinglikeaseagull

Isabell can't stop thinking about her.

When she's trying to sleep, when she's brushing her hair, when she's writing her homework – Eva's always right there, lurking in the back of her mind. Her blond hair, her blue eyes, that self-assured half-smile and the way her body moved as she walked.

Isabell has to switch to a different lip stick colour, because every time she goes to put it on she blushes and thinks about how Eva's lips had been right there, the last thing to touch it. It's an excruciatingly stupid thing to think, to care about so much, but Isabell can't help it. She wants very badly to touch her own mouth to where Eva's had been, and at the same time she doesn't want to at all. Doesn't want to remove that mostly-imagined trace of her, and doesn't really want to admit to herself how badly she wants to put her lips somewhere Eva's have been.

She hasn't really felt like this – excited and terrified and just a little hopeful – since before Jonas told her he'd kissed Eva – Ingrid's Eva. Jonas' Eva.

And they're meant to be a kosegroup duo, right? So it's not weird that Isabell goes to check the sign up sheet for her full name, mouths _Eva Bech N_ _æ_ _sheim_ to herself and has to tamp down a smile before she catches sight of Emil and ducks into an empty corridor to avoid him.

She doesn't know how to talk to Eva again, how to get closer to her, without awkwardly hovering outside her classroom, and that's just a little too open, too visible, so when she comes across Vilde in the school courtyard, she asks her about kosegroup.

“Oh! I didn't think you'd be so into it,” Vilde says. “You usually only hang out with your boys.”

Isabell makes herself laugh and roll her eyes. “Yeah, well, sometimes a girl needs a break from only boys, you know what I mean?”

Vilde laughs too. “They really are idiots sometimes.”

“Oh, _all_ the time,” Isabell confirms. “Anyway I was wondering, since you're group leader, do you have a way to get in touch with the others?”

“How do you mean?” Vilde asks.

“Like, phone numbers? Eva from 3STB and I are in a duo for the baking thing but I couldn't get her number at the end of last meeting, so I was wondering if you have it.”

“Oh! That's so nice of you, that you're partnering up with her. I think she's new and that she came looking for friends at the group, you know?” Vilde says.

“Yeah, she's cool,” Isabell shrugs. “So…?”

“Sorry, Isabell, no, I don't have all the phone numbers. I just usually go around to everyone's classroom to let them know about meetings,” Vilde says. “But I should probably get everyone's numbers, right? That would be so much easier, why didn't I think of that? Thanks for the idea!”

“Uh, yeah, no problem. I'll just try and catch her between classes I guess,” Isabell says, trying to tamp down the hot flush in her belly at the thought of just approaching Eva in person. She can use the kosegroup thing as an excuse, right?

“Isabella!” she hears Magnus trill, drumming his hands against her shoulders before sliding up next to her.

“Ugh, what do you want?” Isabell asks, shaking his hands off her shoulder and rolling her eyes at Jonas with a smile when he catches her gaze with an amused smile of his own. Truthfully, Isabell kind of loves Magnus and his dumbass, easy affection, it just doesn't make it any easier for her to keep her act together. Sometimes all she wants to do is be just as stupid as he is, but that's not who she is. Not who she needs people to think she is, at least.

“Just saying hello,” Magnus grins, wide.

Vilde launches into a scolding of them for not showing up on Friday and what they missed out on then, but Isabell catches sight of a blonde, tall figure and it's like someone turns the volume on the whole world down. All she notices is the blonde quiff and that confident stride. The blue and white varsity jacket somehow doesn't swamp Eva's shoulders but make her look broader. Her legs in slim jeans seem to go on forever, the slight heel on her ankle boots giving her even more height. Isabell never knew she had a thing for tall girls, but _damn_. She can't help but stare, admire the swagger and the confidence, the way she looks like someone plucked her straight out of a movie when she leans against the side of the school building and puts on her sunglasses, offering her fist for bumps from some guys Isabell vaguely recognises as third year guys she's seen around last year.

“Isabell?” someone says then, pulling her attention away rather abruptly.

“What?” she asks, and it's only when she looks around at her boys that she notices Emil, practically bouncing on his feet in front of her.

“I was wondering if you wanted to come to this party with me this weekend? This girl in my year is celebrating her birthday and her parents are out, so it's going to be a whole thing,” he says. “You can bring your friends.”

Magnus and Mahdi elbow her in the sides and she can practically hear them cheering about sloppy drunk first year girls but 1) gross and 2) she's not _into_ Emil.

“Uh, sorry, I don't think I can this weekend,” she says.

Emil pouts a little. “Aw, are you sure?”

“Yeah, Isabell, are you sure? What the fuck else do you have going on?” Mahdi asks, shaking her a little.

“Sorry, I have a lot of studying to do,” Isabell says, which she realises the moment it's out of her mouth is a really weak excuse.

Magnus makes a noise like a honking goose and repeats, “Studying?!”

“Ignore her,” Mahdi says to Emil. “We'll be there.”

Emil beams at them and takes a step back before Isabell can protest. “Cool. I'll see you Friday, then.”

“Uh, what are you doing?” Vilde pipes up. “Isabell clearly didn't want to go.”

“Ah, she's just being shy,” Magnus waves her off.

Isabell seizes her chance and shakes him and Mahdi off. “Actually, I'm not. He's giving me really weird vibes. We made out once and now he's following me around like a puppy? It's creepy.”

“Oh, come on,” Mahdi says. “He's harmless.”

“No, if Isabell doesn't want to be around him, you should listen to her,” Vilde says with a glare, and links her arm through Isabell's. “You're meant to be her friends, aren't you? You should care about her safety.”

“What? Of course we care about her safety!” Magnus protests.

“Then maybe don't make promises to over-eager boys _for her_ and let her make her own decisions! Just because you want to get your dicks wet doesn't mean she has to give it up to someone else!” Vilde chides, and tosses her hair with a final glare, tugging Isabell away from their stunned faces.

“Ugh, boys,” she grumbles when they're a few steps away, and Isabell reaches up to squeeze her hand, oddly touched.

“Hey, thanks for that,” she says.

Vilde shrugs. “It's no problem. Boys don't _get it_ , you know? We have to be way more careful with what we do when we're flirting and stuff. And if he's giving you bad vibes, he's giving you bad vibes. I think he told me he'd be in a duo with you in the kosegroup? But I'll tell him you're already with Eva and to find someone else.”

Isabell stares at her, a little stunned. She's never been close to Vilde, has possibly been a little dismissive of her and her quest to make the most popular russe bus, but maybe she's judged her a little too quickly.

“Yeah,” she says, a little more quietly. “Seriously, thank you. That's really nice of you.”

Vilde beams at her. “It's really no problem! If you need an excuse to get out of Friday, just tell the boys there's more kosegroup stuff for you to do!”

“Okay, I'll do that,” Isabell says with a laugh, and then lets Vilde slips her arm from hers again.

“Okay! I've gotta go meet up with Sana and Eva, but if you ever want a break from the boys, you can totally come join us.”

“Thanks, yeah. I'll keep it in mind,” Isabell says, even though she's pretty sure that Eva wouldn't be quite so happy to see her around. That's a bridge Isabell probably burned to the ground; not that she blames Eva.

“Cool! Okay! I'll see you around!” Vilde beams at her and waves, bracelets on her wrist jingling a little before she whirls around and flounces off down the hallway.

Isabell watches her go with a weird smile stuck on her face, wondering if she's making a friend. She hasn't really made any friends… ever. Well, since Jonas, but they were so young that it was all very different. Magnus and Mahdi just kind of happened because they hung around Jonas, and Ingrid, Sara and Eva just happened when Ingrid was dating Jonas. That of course all went to shit twice over, so now here Isabell is. Seventeen years old and suddenly realising she hasn't made a friend since primary school.

Well, fuck.

The ringing of the bell startles her out of her thoughts, leaving her to realise with a quiet curse that she's one of the last people left in the hallway and she has to get all the way across the building to the biology lab. With a quiet curse she sets off, power walking as fast as she can without breaking into an actual run and manages to slip into her seat beside Sana with three seconds to spare before their teacher closes the door behind him and announces to the class that today will be yet another self-study lesson.

At least that means she won't have to keep looking at him and his way too showy slacks.

  
  


After school, Jonas catches her in the courtyard and apologises profusely for not stepping in with Mahdi and Magnus and Emil earlier, and Isabell waves him off, but reiterates that she really doesn't want to give Emil any hope.

“I'm just not into him,” she says with a shrug. “And I don't want him to get any ideas, so I don't want to go to this party.”

“Yeah, no, totally,” Jonas says, and then tacks on, “Is it because he's a first year?”

“What? No, I don't care he's younger than us,” Isabell says with a roll of her eyes. “I just don't want to be his girlfriend. Do I have to have a reason?”

“No, no, it's chill. I'm just wondering. You barely gave him a chance,” Jonas says with a shrug.

Isabell scowls a little and huffs a sigh. “I don't want to, Jonas.”

Jonas lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Yeah. It's cool. You don't have to.”

“Thanks,” Isabell drawls and rolls her eyes again. “Much appreciated that you're letting me make my own decisions about my dating life.”

“There's no need to get pissy, Isa, I'm just saying. You don't know the guy. You always shoot guys down before giving them a real chance. You might like him if you got to know him, he seems sweet,” Jonas says, rolling his own eyes at her too.

“But I don't want to, Jonas,” she repeats. “You can go to this firstie party, I don't care, but I'm not coming!”

“Who's not coming where?” Magnus asks, popping up beside them, slightly out of breath like he ran to catch up to them.

“Isabell isn't coming to the party on Friday,” Jonas says.

“Oh! Yeah, no, that's totally cool,” Magnus says. “Sorry we pushed you into that, you obviously don't have to come if you don't want to, I didn't think that when you said he gave you weird vibes you meant he was, you know, like, dangerous or something---”

Isabell sighs. “I don't think he's dangerous or anything, I just don't want to give him false hope. I'm not into him.”

“Oh,” Magnus says, pausing for a moment, and then asks, “Why?”

Isabell shrugs, and swallows the truth, and wonders for the first time if it wouldn't just be easier to just… tell them. “I'm just not.”

“Okay,” Mahdi says, a little skeptical, but obviously not about to fight her about it after Vilde's little explosion earlier. “Are you going to pregame with us though? Cause it's your turn to host, technically.”

Isabell is about zero percent in the mood for that, but she makes herself nod.

“Yeah. I can pregrame.”

The boys all cheer and give her high fives, and then that's it and they part ways.

  
  


At home, she asks Eskild to get her some beer for Friday so she can host a little get together, and he gives a vague kind of non-answer that ends up with him asking for the money for rent for this month and Isabell hiding out in her room for the rest of the evening.

Instead of doing her homework, she googles Eva and finds a video interview someone did with her for class last year, baseball cap hiding her hair and her smile wide and happy as she talks about this weird stop motion project she's doing and how much she loves Baz Luhrmann films. Isabell has no idea what she's talking about, but she watches it twice more before she googles Baz Luhrmann and settles in to watch Romeo + Juliet.

  
  


By Friday, Eskild hasn't definitively turned her down yet, so by the time she's on the tram home and the boys are blowing up the group chat, she figures maybe she was just being too pessimistic. Maybe this is going to be fine. The boys will come over and they'll have fun and then they'll leave for the party and she can stay home and… watch a movie or something.

And then Eskild does text.

  
  


**Eskild**

Sorry honey-bunch, I won't make it back from work in time for your little pregame!

Seriously? And you didn't know this any earlier?

Sorry! Have fun though!

  
  


She contemplates calling him, angry, for all of five seconds, but then sighs and just rubs a tired hand over her face. It's not like getting angry at Eskild will do any good. It won' get him out of work any faster and it won't get her any beer. It might make her feel better to yell at him a bit, but ultimately it'll just make her feel worse.

Good to know her instincts about tonight were right though. She's fucked.

“Hi,” someone pipes up then, and when Isabell looks up, the hair at the back of her neck standing up because she _knows_ that voice, she looks right into Eva's sparkling blue eyes and her smile. Not Jonas' Eva. Kosegroup Eva.

“Uh, hi,” she says, and then clears her throat because it comes out sounding way too croaky. She glances up at Eva again, waiting to hear why it is she approached her, but Eva's biting her lip, her eyes widening a little while they flit back and forth between Isabell's, like she's not sure what to say either.

“We're good at this,” she finally says. “Conversation.”

Isabell huffs a laugh, and then a thought occurs to her. Isabell is a third year.

“Hey, uh, you're over eighteen, right?” she asks.

Eva nods and tilts her head curiously.

“Can you maybe… buy me some beer?” Isabell asks. “My flatmate bailed on me and I promised to provide some for this pregame I'm supposed to be hosting, and… well. You know.”

She trails off and glances to the side, feeling her cheeks go a little hot when her brain catches up with her rambling. Gosh.

“Yeah,” Eva says then. “I can do that.”

Isabell beams at her, and when Eva motions to follow her off the tram at the next stop, she does.

She waits outside when Eva goes into the store, trying to make it less obvious that Eva's buying the beer not for herself but someone clearly too young to buy any, but when Eva comes back out to join her, she doesn't have any beer with her either.

“I forgot my ID at home, sorry. Come with to fetch it?” she suggests, and Isabell finds herself following Eva before she's really thought it through.

No one's home at Eva's place, and Isabell looks around surreptitiously, at the art on the walls, the jackets on the hooks by the door, the books stacked high in bookshelves in the living room they pass. She's pretty sure Eva lives with her parents, because this does not look like the flat a bunch of students would share.

Eva goes through her room for a while and Isabell takes a minute to look around there too. There are guitars on the wall and some stuff crammed under her loft bed. One entire wall is taken up by pictures and posters and writing she's taped to it. There's some art there too, that looks like Eva made it, and Isabell can't help but smile to herself at it.

It's good.

“Did you do these?” she asks, looking up and over at Eva when she stops turning her room upside down to look over at Isabell over her shoulder.

Fuck, but she looks good today.

“Yeah. Do you like them?”

Isabell nods. “Yeah. They're really good. Funny.”

Dark too, but in a funny, sarcastic way.

“Thanks,” Eva grins and then triumphantly goes “a-ha!”

“You found it?” Isabell asks, but when she turns to Eva again, she's holding up a joint.

“Better,” Eva grins. “Want to?”

Isabell shrugs. She's fucked anyway if she can't get beer. Might as well enjoy herself in the meantime.

It's still warm out, so they open the window and sit in the large windowsill, Isabell's legs dangling off the side, knees tucked up in an approximation of what might be called lady-like, and Eva sprawls out like she doesn't have a care in the world, one leg pulled up and one dangling down, her arm resting on her propped up knee as she asks Isabell about the school.

It's intoxicating, even more so than the weed, or maybe more so because of the weed, the way Eva doesn't look away from her. She pays attention to everything Isabell says, be it about a tv show she watched or about the absence limit at school. She's not used to being looked at like that, like she's someone interesting, someone worth paying attention to. Like there are layers to her and Eva wants to peel them all back and see what's underneath.

Jesus fuck.

Her face runs hot at the thought and Isabell looks to the side, out of the window at the large tree in front of it, the green of its leaves looking soft an inviting. For a moment she wishes she were a bird or a bee or a fairy. Something small and light enough to know what it's like to hide amidst all that green.

“You hungry?” Eva asks when they've at last finished the joint and exhausted every obvious topic of conversation.

Isabell's not hungry as such, but she could eat, and she doesn't remember what kind of food she has at home either, so she's not about to turn the offer down.

She nods.

Eva hops down from the windowsill and then offers her hand to help Isabell down when she complains that her legs fell asleep.

Her fingers feel like hot brands around Isabell's own, and even though Eva lets go almost immediately, no lingering touch or anything happening between them, Isabell's sure she's still going to be feeling this touch when she leaves to go home later.

The sandwiches Eva makes are, frankly, disgusting, but it doesn't matter because Isabell's still feeling breathless and a little light-headed from the weed and the beer that Eva finds in her fridge and the way she keeps _looking_ at her. Just looking. Like this isn't a random afternoon they're spending together for no good reason, like she's happy they ran into each other on the tram. Like she might want to spend more time with Isabell, repeat this afternoon over and over.

So when she's ducking down to put the sandwiches in the oven, Isabell pulls out her phone and texts the boys she can't host the pregame after all, adds the cherry and the syringe emoji and hopes that they get it. She doesn't bother to wait for their answers, just beams at Eva when she hands her a plate with some of that questionable toast, and follows her back to her room.

Isabell doesn't want to leave.

She wants to keep looking at Eva, wants Eva to keep looking back at her. She's not sure what this means, if it means anything, but for the first time in a long time, she's not making herself look away from a pretty girl. She's _looking_ , and occasionally the curve of Eva's smile, the path of her gaze over Isabell's face and shoulders and maybe even lower than that makes her think that Eva's looking _back._

It's… incredible. It feels like breathing fresh air after having spent hours in a crowded bar, the way your whole body expands and takes it in and it's only then that your realise how wrong everything has felt up until then. Only that Isabell already knows how wrong everything usually feels. She just didn't know it could feel this right.

They're giggling over some story or other that Isabell's telling about something that happened with Jonas last year, not feeling the dreaded knot of shame in the pit of her belly for the first time in almost a year, when the doorbell rings and Eva's face goes from surprise to disappointment and then to a bright smile in less than two seconds.

“Fuck, I totally forgot I have friends coming over,” she says, scrambling up from the floor to, presumably, go let them in. “But stay! There's definitely enough beer for everyone!”

Eva vanishes down into the flat, and when Isabell hears the front door open and new voices join Eva's, she feels her heart jump up into her throat.

Well.

Okay.

She can do this.

She gets up from the floor too, grabs the plates of their half-eaten sandwiches and puts them on the window sill so they won't be in the way on the floor, and turns around to the entrance of Eva's room just in time to see her walk in under the arm of a boy just a little shorter than her.

“Oh! I didn't know you had a friend over!” the boy says, grinning at Eva and then holding out a hand to Isabell. “I'm Stian, Eva's boyfriend.”

“Uh, Isabell. I go to Eva's school,” Isabell says, trying not to give in to the way her entire body feels like it's crawling with ants at the word 'boyfriend', and shaking his hand.

Boyfriend. Fuck, of course she has a boyfriend, how could a girl like Eva not have a boyfriend?

“Did you know that your boyfriend just got awarded employee of the month, by the way?” Stian turns to Eva to say, and Eva beams at him.

“Did he now? Well, that deserves a little reward, don't you think?” she teases back, her voice pitched low and intimate and making Isabell's skin crawl and her eyes burn.

She swallows hard and looks away from the couple kissing, introducing herself to the two other people in the room and wondering if it's too late for her to pretend she really needs to get going for that pregame she cancelled.

In the end, she stays for another hour, sitting beside one of Eva's friends and listening to conversations she doesn't understand, before she claims a headache and leaves. The boys are understanding of her excuse in their groupchat, at least, so that's one less thing to worry about. But Emil keeps texting, asking her where she is, calling her names for promising to come and then not showing up.

Just as she gets home, she gets another text from Jonas, letting her know where they are and that “Emil seems to be really into you”, should she change her mind.

The flatshare is dark and empty when she turns the key, and just this once Isabell wishes it wasn't. Her section of the fridge is equally empty, but it's Friday night and Isabell doesn't have anything to do that can't wait until tomorrow, so she gets changed and gets into bed, pulling her headphones and covers over her head and willing herself to fall asleep.

Turns out her instinct wasn't so off after all. Today is fucking garbage.

  
  


**The End**


End file.
